Like a Fox

Bill O'Reilly was on David Letterman a month or two ago, and Letterman put him on the spot about the poor quality of Fox News broadcasts. Amazingly and very disappointingly, Letterman said he didn't know why Fox News was "crap," he just knew. I can't blame Letterman for not watching Fox News, but I don't have to look any further than the local paper (their online edition is weak) to find plenty of good examples of how extremely right-wing and subjective these guys are.

The following quotes were made regarding the Iraq War, when it began in early 2003.

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?" - Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, Jan 29, 2003

"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will... There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks; try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that." - Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, February 10, 2003

And that's just Bill O'Reilly, the ignorance is abundant at Fox News:

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the Left and so the Right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the Left is giong to have to hang its head for three or four more years." - Dick Morris, Fox News, April 9, 2003.

It's not the right-sided nature of people like Bill O'Reilly that bothers me, it's the predictable flag-waving copout that's resorted to whenever anyone questions the president. From the video clip: "This simplistic stuff... [saying] 'he lied', and other stuff, does the country no good." We don't have to look any further than Bush's Democratic predecessor to find an important example of dishonesty, only then it was the Right that was pushing the questions.

The Strokes

The Strokes are doing an impressive Canadian Tour this spring. I've secured 4 sweet tickets for their show in Toronto. They're making a stop in Winnipeg, so keep your eye on ticketmaster.

More info on my movie creator

As requested, here's some more details on my yet-to-be-named movie creator.

Basically, I think that making hand-drawn movies/animations should be as easy as drawing a picture in Microsoft Paint.

The goal would be to allow you to select from a few basic shapes, such as lines, rectangles, and circles, as well as the option of adding images (JPEGS, Bitmaps, etc) for backgrounds. Ideally, you'd draw the first frame, hit next, add to the frame, move things around, hit next, continue until finished. Then hit play, and you have your animation.

One feature that would make things even more interesting would be to show a transparent view of the last frame in the current frame, so that you'd have to redraw each frame individually, but with a visual reference to the last frame that wouldn't show up when you play the movie back. This would lead to seemingly stationary objects that dance around throughout the movie, such as the effect in Waking Life, which I hope you've seen.

I'd make the source code available, and I might even make a Sourceforge project out of it if there were a few other developers interested.

The contents of the movie files would likely in XML format, and the movies would have to be played back through this program, unless enough people bitch, and I'm willing to compile the movies into executables (.exe files).

Any additional features/suggestions are welcome. I'd also like to find a place to host the files, but short of opening a GMail account for everyone to login to and download from, there must be some free file hosting services, right?

anyone interested?

I've been thinking about writing a little program to make simple movies. Basically, I'd like to be able to make very short animations in the simplest way possible. It'd be like Microsoft Paint, only you'd be able to draw several frames, and play them back as a movie.

If you're interested, please email me. If at least one other person would make movies, I'll write it. The movies would have to be played back through this little player, but if enough people are doing it, I'll add the ability to compile the movies into an executable, so that you can just send the .exe to people to play it.

What's up? Great to see you. (Pause)

The Oxford Muse is a charitable foundation in Oxford, England, whose goal is to invite people to go beyond superficial, everyday chitchat, and to develop fascinating conversations not only with the people you see everyday, but with complete strangers.

There's an interesting half-hour interview with the founder of this project available through the Radio Netherlands website.

Various projects and initiatives have been taken by this group, producing interesting conversations (referred to as Portraits) with people ranging from homeless people to university professors (who sometimes differ only slightly in appearance). You can "a-muse" yourself with some of these portraits here.

Near Bloor & Windermere, Toronto.

That's not even possible!

I won't even try this because it'd be a disgrace to such an honorable act.

Check out the square corners on that shirt when she's done.

Lamp post

a bit of downtime

Some of you may have noticed that this blog was unavailable for a day or so. I notified blogger, and they fixed the problem immediately, I'm not really sure what happened.
Now, my own computer seems to have taken one in the steel, so until I get my CDROM drive working I can't upload any of the pictures I took last weekend.

I don't like friends

Phoebe: Today is Mike and my one-year anniversary.
Rachel: OH! What's it the anniversary of? First date? First kiss? First time you had sex?
Phoebe: Yeah!

There are many, many reasons not to watch friends. Pathetic grammar aside, it's a show with a bunch of good looking actors with dialog serving no higher purpose than to setup the next 7-second-interval of punchlines.

If I told you that Cristine and I were celebrating our anniversary, why the hell would you ask what occasion the anniversary marked? Whenever I see this show, my instinct is to think that I could easily write something funnier. But, as my music collection and movie-going will show, my tastes are much more refined than the general public. I'm being sarcastic, but I'm easily bored with blockbuster movies, and the only radio I listen to is CBC, so my taste is, at the least, eccentric. This was an incredibly successful show, but to me it just doesn't fire the right neurons.

I don't watch Friends, but TBS flaunts the commercials for this show like they're trying to cover the millions of dollars it must cost to syndicate it.

I rarely change the channel on a commercial break; but when I do, I follow a one minute time-limit. There's nothing that bothers me more than missing the first 30 seconds after a commercial break. After I've been away from the channel for approximately 60 seconds, I return to it posthaste, with plenty of time to find out if Elaine has heard of shrinkage, and how she'll respond to George's shrinkage problem.